I've encountered a few jerks in law enforcement but mostly, good, mature cops who handled themselves professionally. So I used to have a hard time believing police officers would waste their time and our tax dollars stopping people for minor infractions until I saw it with my own eyes and heard firsthand accounts from friends and relatives of color.

A black friend was stopped for a dim license plate light, and another time on an East Texas highway for following me too closely. My Mexican-American brother-in-law had his van stopped, searched and partially disassembled in Alabama because the officer told him the tint looked too dark. During the search, the officer said the vehicle looked too nice to be his. My husband, who is South Asian, was stopped for speeding in my home county, Guadalupe, as we drove to a friend's wedding. We tried to explain to the state trooper that the speedometer was broken, but he quickly ordered my husband out of the car to investigate another claim: whether we were really married.

Who gets stopped for failing to signal while changing lanes? That's where the questions over Sandra Bland's July 10 arrest in Waller County and her death in jail should begin.

People of color are often treated differently by police from the get-go. And that can set the tone for the entire encounter. The people I know who were treated disrespectfully by police didn't mouth off or resist. Their encounters ended peacefully. And I'm not advocating that victims of police bias handle such situations any differently.

But how long do we expect people to just take it?

One minute, Bland was a 28-year-old college graduate on her way from her native Chicago to a new life and a new job at her alma mater, Prairie View A&M. The next minute, she's stopped for a traffic offense that many people commit several times a day without consequence, and she finds herself facedown in the grass on the side of the road and under arrest. Then she spends three days in jail and is found hanging by a trash bag in her cell.

Authorities initially declared the cause of death suicide. Family insisted Bland was upbeat about her new job and wouldn't have taken her own life. This week, Waller County District Attorney Elton Mathis said his office was investigating as it would other jail deaths, as a homicide.

In dash-cam video released late Tuesday, we finally got to see what led to Bland's arrest. And we see how it could have been avoided. Texas Department of Public Safety Trooper Brian Encinia stops Bland and at first seems respectful, referring to her as "ma'am," but as he returns to her car with her driver's license and insurance, he notes that she seems irritated.

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Lisa Falkenberg

"I am irritated," she says, explaining that she felt the trooper was speeding up and tailing her, so she moved over, and then he stopped her for it. He doesn't explain his actions or acknowledge her feelings. He simply says, "Are you done?"

Then he asks her to "please" put out her cigarette. She asks why she should have to put out her cigarette in her own car.

That's when Encinia loses his patience. He orders Bland out of the car, and she resists, seemingly incredulous as to the reason why. It's now a power struggle, and the trooper who helped escalate it does nothing to de-escalate it. He threatens to "yank" her out of the car. He pulls out a Taser, points it at her and screams "I will light you up."

Bland gets out of the car, and the two walk out of view of the dash-cam. We can't see whether Bland kicks the trooper, as he claimed later in his affidavit. But we can hear Bland spewing profanity at him and demanding to know why she was being arrested. She accuses him at one point of slamming her head down and tells him she has epilepsy.

"Good," he says.

Over and over, Bland repeats a phrase that seems part question and part commentary.

"All of this for a traffic signal," she says.

There's no question that Bland mishandled the situation. But she wasn't the one with the badge. She wasn't sworn to protect anybody. Encinia had the power and he let his emotions take over. He seemed more worried about keeping Bland in his control than keeping the peace. And this seems to be a pattern in other cases, including the one in McKinney where an officer threatened black teens at a pool party.

"Something happened somewhere that our police departments lost sight of their original mission, which is to keep us safe," said Terri Burke, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas.

Encinia, who has been with DPS about a year, is on administrative duty for violating the agency's courtesy policy. But DPS has more questions to answer about his behavior, including why he didn't mention in his affidavit that he pulled a Taser on Bland.

Given what we've heard so far about Bland's history of depression, it's likely that she died by her own hand in that jail cell. It's also likely that her treatment by law enforcement influenced her decision.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who along with senators made a point to personally attend an event for Bland over the weekend and a meeting with officials Tuesday, says he's trying to send the message that all lives matter. "What's important is that the family go back to Chicago at some point and say 'in Texas, there was justice. In Texas, there was transparency.' "

To get there, we have to go back to the beginning. Bland's arrest didn't stem from some serious threat to public safety. It started with a blinker.